Tim Peake visiting the exhibition about him at the Novium Museum in Chichester earlier this year. Peter Langdown picture

Published:16:43Thursday 26 October 2017

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TV presenter Amanda Holden was left red faced when she asked Sussex astronaut Tim Peake about visiting the moon.

Interviewing Major Peake about his new book on This Morning earlier, Amanda asked: “I don’t know whether you’d be able to answer this because it might be a naughty thing.

“When you went to the moon, did you take a piece of the moon and bring it back home?”

Major Peake quickly replied: “So I wasn’t on the moon, I was on the space station.”

Pressing on, Amanda added: “So you never got off? There was nothing floating about that you could grab?”

Chichester-born ESA astronaut Major Peake, 45, spent six months aboard the International Space Station from December 2015.

He became the first British astronaut to do a spacewalk on the ISS on January 15, 2016, but of course didn’t visit the moon during his space mission.

In fact, the last person to land on the moon was Eugene Cernan in 1972 - more than 40 years ago.

The ISS orbits Earth from a distance of just 250 miles - while the moon orbits Earth roughly 250,000 miles away.

Many took to social media to poke fun at the presenter.

Tony‏ @toonehh said: “Omg I can’t believe Amanda Holden just asked Tim Peake if he brought back anything from the moon #ThisMorning.”

JC said: “Amanda Holden just asked Tim Peake if he “brought back a piece of the moon”....seriously, not as a joke!”

Major Peake appeared on the ITV show to talk about his new book, Ask an Astronaut.

Asked by Amanda’s co-presenter, Ben Shephard, what the grossest thing about space was, Major Peake said: “I think the grossest thing about space, because we don’t use our feet, we don’t walk or feel pressure on our feet, all the dead skin just completely sheds off.

“It’s the best pedicure in the world, you have baby’s feet when you come back to earth.